


black tables

by Teroe



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix It Fic, still quite a bit of angst tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teroe/pseuds/Teroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there are lines everywhere, it's a matter of crossing them, and there's nothing she wouldn't do to fix this</p>
            </blockquote>





	black tables

**Author's Note:**

> just a little something before i get back to working on part 2 of the roadtrip au.

_The blood on clarke’s hands stains. Sinks between her fingers, sticky and thick and warm, like a tattoo she can’t remember getting, because even when it's finally gone she knows it won’t be really. So she doesn’t try. She holds on to that feeling--that sickness--like an ache in the marrow of her bones. Presses her hands to lexa’s stomach to stop the flow, words a mix of pleads and furious orders--whispered ‘not yets’ and frantic ‘do somethings’ but the world spins slowly around her. She can’t help but feel like she’s already been left behind._

* * *

 

Clarke’s lungs burn, every breath dragging through her chest in centimeters per second. The lights in the dropship are dim, the shadows soft and blurred, and it hinders more than it helps. It feels like years and nothing at all. There’s still bodies on tables, still her with her doubt and self inadequacy, but this fight has gone on for so long Clarke’s worried she’s forgotten how to stop.

The air is thick, and Raven doesn’t look at her or the body draped over the table. She stares pointedly off to the side at the air-lock door, and Clarke can’t blame her. It feels all too familiar to her too.

Only now it’s flipped and Finn’s ghost seems to linger in the metalwork.

“Can you do it?”

“Can I-- _Clarke_. I don’t think you understand what it is you’re asking. It’s not just circuitry. It’s cells and nerves and veins and flesh--” Raven stops, weight settled heavily onto her cane, eyes unable to focus as she thinks. “I’m not a doctor, and she’s already--”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Clarke snaps, hands curling into fists at her side. It's been too many hours already, and time is a war she’s already losing.

“Clarke--”

“Can you do it?”

Raven watches her, contemplates, brows pinched, until finally a sigh. “I’ll need some help,” And she laughs, that very short raven kind of laugh. “but I can try.”

A lightness seeps into Clarke's chest, eases out the sudden anger--fear--and she feels it, slow and warm like a pulse beneath her skin. It holds high in her throat, and she breathes. “Please.”

* * *

 

_When they try to take her away, she roars, all teeth and tears. It stops them dead, Titus unmoving off to her side, his fingers charred black by lexa’s blood and the chip stored safely in the little tin can he holds like a prayer in his hands. Clarke can’t feel anything anymore, the flutter underneath her fingers too light to distinguish, but she’s sure it's still there. Somewhere. Beneath the flesh and blood and bone, it has to be there. She just has to find it--put it back._

* * *

 

Raven is right. It’s more than just circuitry. Clarke’s hands sweat, the scalpel held tightly in her left, and she tries not to shake. She’s not scared of failing. What more could she lose, after all. It’s the hope that trickles in like much need rain, prickles through the tips of her fingers as she makes the first incision at the back of Lexa’s neck, reopening old wounds.

There’s diagrams from her mother’s books and messy blueprint scripts scattered around the body lying prone on the makeshift surgical table, bare besides the white cloth drawn up to her chest and covering the now patched wound that started it all, wires and tubes strapped and dangling. Raven’s makeshift parts lay waiting, unassembled in their yet to be complete state, and the infinity symbol stares back at her in the center of it all. A chip no bigger than the size of her pinky nail, wires as thin as spider’s thread protruding from the sides, and Clarke tries to swallow down the unease. Clarke doesn’t ask, but there’s no questioning the similarities. She wonders if Raven is aware, if it's a coincidence born from a similar need, but she shakes off the thought before it catches.

It's not as bloody as it should be, but Clarke has a feeling there’s more than enough blood on her hands to make up for it. By now it seems caked to her hands, skin cold, and the difference between then and now--that all-encompassing warmth she still remembers all too vividly, like the sun kept comfortably next to her. She wants it again. She wants it so much that the thought has her eyes sting, hands aching. Black blood blurs and she drags a hand across her eyes, focus wavering but not gone and she holds it there.

In place.

* * *

 

_Lexa’s stare is blank, glassy, the blood on the corner of her mouth dried and cracked, and Clarke tries not to look for too long. But it’s hard. Because she is sure it’s love. She loves Lexa._

_And she thinks it might kill her._

* * *

 

After all's said and done, the emptiness Clarke feels when the last stitch is knitted is unexpected. The drone of the machines ring hollow and far off, her hands aching from the strain. The bowl of water beside the worktable bleeds, the cloth half submerged in its murkiness more black than white, and she doesn’t bother. She drags her hands over her pants, leaving streaks, and reaches for the security baton leaning against the table.

She hears Raven push up from her stool in a rush, leftover parts scattering around the computer she’s situated behind. “Hey, whoa--wait a second.” The alarm that punctuates those words is what draws Clarke back, and when she looks, Raven is half out of her chair, leg awkwardly bent and a hand held palm out as if she intends, despite the distance, to pull Clarke back herself. “We’re not done yet.”

“We’re running out of time.”

“I _know_.” Raven’s eyes are dark, the hand holding her up clutching the end of the table, knuckles white. “I know and I understand, so back the fuck up while I finish.”

Clarke’s grip slackens, the baton slipping, and she exhales shakily. The steady beeps emanating from the machines seem to keep time, purposeful when mixed in with the clatter of Raven’s fingers against the computer keys. Clarke counts each one, thumb brushing back and forth across the cold metal of the handle.

One (the stillness still bothers her, makes her skin itch and crawl, but Clarke stares anyway).

Two (the tattoo stands out against the paleness of Lexa’s skin, stretching down her back, indistinguishable from the blood, and it feels so far away even now).

Three (death is not the end, she thinks. What a load of shit).

Four.... Five….. Six….. Seven (It's not the end).

“Okay.” Clarke raises her eyes and finds Raven watching her. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The button gives under the pressure of her thumb and the electricity starts to life. Sparks crackle and spit. The body faces away and it helps, not having to look at the lifelessness staring back at her like the rest of her failures--that if this should follow suit, well. Life can’t really get any worse than it already is.

Clarke tries not to think, the world oddly out of focus as she brings the baton down. What follows is nothing. Just noises, small mechanical whirs and that steady, slow beat. And when everything blurs in front of her, time stretching, her breath catches in her throat and she tries to swallow. It doesn’t work and she raises her hand again.

“Clarke.” A firm grasp circles her wrist, gently tugs her away. Raven’s voice is surprisingly soft, but Clarke keeps her gaze low. She doesn’t want Raven to see her now. “We can’t risk shorting the circuit. We’ll figure out something else.”

Clarke glances up and the look in Raven’s eyes--remorse, sadness, empathy--makes her insides twist, and she ducks her head again, a feeling all too familiar settling high in her chest, at the base of her throat. She manages a nod anyway, dragging a hand across her nose and then back again to wipe the wetness from her cheeks.

It works as well as she expects and she’s almost too tired to care. Her head feels light, her breath too shallow and short for the pace her heart sets. A part of her thinks it's about time, the other tries to stuff it all back in, and somewhere far off she hears Raven’s quiet “--breathe, Clarke. It’s okay. Breathe.”

And then there’s the beep. a short crisp note that comes a second too soon and it fills the room, traps itself within the air and hangs there. It echoes, quicker than before, and then again, but when Clarke notices the subtle drop of Raven’s jaw, the wideness to her eyes, it pulls her attention back.

At first it’s only the machine, insistent and stubborn and yet undeniably uneven, the previously static line hitching like barbed notches on the screen. Clarke doesn’t believe it--tries to blink past the welling of tears she’s kept locked up for too long. That reality has become some twisted dream she’s conjured up to convince herself that life can be more than just surviving.

She thinks it’s awfully cruel, but she doesn’t look away. There’s a heaviness to it all. In the air, but mostly in the slowness of it all. In that twitch of muscle as the body stirs and then a subtle shift of the hand. It presses flat against the top of the metal table and pushes, and the wires sway with the movement. The line of Lexa's back arches and Clarke can see the strain of her bones in the sharp cut of her shoulder blades protruding against her skin. All of the weight sinks wholly onto her arms, the stained sheet slipping to gather about her waist.

Everything seems quiet now and the sharp overhead light above the table casts her in stark contrast. Shadows stretch long, highlights the dips and hollows as she stares at her hand, twists it this way and that, and yet when she finally turns, their eyes catching, it feels as if time stops.

Lexa’s lips part, chest expanding until Clarke is sure she’ll burst.

But then, softly, all hoarse and crumbling, “Clarke.”

(“Clarke,” Lexa says, but it's more of a whisper spread out over the underside of Clarke’s chin. Reverent. A prayer mixed in with the sunlight warm on her back as lexa’s fingers trail over her skin. It feels like heaven on earth.)

And Clarke’s never heard something sound so right and so wrong all at once.

* * *

 

_She thinks it already has._


End file.
